


The Tactical Result Of An Engagement

by tielan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Humor, Lists, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-07 22:52:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1917039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Plan M? You don't want Plan M. Fury dies in Plan M.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tactical Result Of An Engagement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [APgeeksout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/gifts).



> You asked for Maria Hill, separately and specifically. Thanks for the opportunity/impetus to write this!

_The tactical result of an engagement forms the base for new strategic decisions_  
_because victory or defeat in a battle changes the situation to such a degree_  
_that no human acumen is able to see beyond the first battle._

_~ Helmuth von Moltke (the Elder) ~_

The first time S.H.I.E.L.D sends her out on a mission, Maria goes off the plan to account for some intel that came to light at the last minute. She gets what they need, rather quicker than her original mission assignment called for, and even acquires an astrophysicist who wasn’t in the script and who promptly takes refuge with S.H.I.E.L.D.

This infuriates the agent in charge of the mission, but amuses Maria’s S.O. at the time – Phil Coulson – although he notes that the rules are there for a reason and she should probably follow them when lives don’t hang in the balance.

Maria listens attentively, nods in all the right places, and deviates from the mission plan on an entirely separate mission nine months later. Again, she completes the mission parameters, just not in the original manner envisioned by the agent in charge.

“Follow the goddamn rules once in a while,” Barton advises at one point. “Or they’ll shoot you down before you ever get your wings out.”

The irony is that Barton goes off-plan considerably more often than Maria does. So does Romanoff. And it’s rumoured to be standard S.H.I.E.L.D policy that an agent doesn’t make above Level 5 without a minimum number of insubordination notations on their record. So it’s not as though deviating from the plan is unusual in S.H.I.E.L.D.

Coulson even said as much, quietly, after that first mission: _Anything can be forgiven so long as the mission is achieved and the body count isn’t unacceptably high._

And yet Maria does things her own way a couple of times, suddenly she’s the goddamn Batman.

* * *

 

The first time Fury intimates that the organisation might have security issues, Maria asks point-blank whether he intends to plug the issue or pull it open.

Fury, being Fury, asks her what she’d do.

“Pull it and see how far it unravels.”

“And if it unravels all the way?”

“Take out the bits that were tearing it apart and see if it can be fit it back together.”

“And if it can’t?”

“Find a new way to do what we’ve always done with what we have left of the pieces.”

That’s Plan A.

As it turns out, Plan A is the one Maria ends up reverting to when S.H.I.E.L.D. goes to hell in the HYDRA handbasket.

Sometimes the original plans _are_ the best.

* * *

 

Plan B involves a shakedown the old-fashioned way, because sometimes Maria’s inner bitch really just wants to tear out a couple of throats.

Unfortunately, the reasonable, rational, coolly calculating rest of her knows that this would be counterproductive.

Besides, this is an intelligence organisation. Fury isn’t the only one whose secrets have secrets, as Stark so aptly put it in that conversation. (Recorded, of course; this _is_ what they do – they’re S.H.I.E.L.D.) So what she thinks is a security leak might very well just be the standard politics of people who think they know what’s best for the world.

Maria has nothing against tearing out throats.

Just as long as they’re the _right_ throats.

* * *

 

There are moments when Maria thinks being Dictator Of The World would be goddamn _satisfying._

She’s not a megalomaniac, whatever people – mostly male agents, but a few female ones, too – might think. She doesn’t want power for power’s sake; she wants power to protect the people who need protecting. Because what’s the point in having power if you’re not using it in the service of others? A woman could gain the whole world and lose her soul that way.

Maria rather likes having a soul. A little beat up, perhaps, a little tarnished, but still good.

Still, when she’s dealing with agents who develop a smirky little grin as she gives them orders, or with operatives who disdain her intel, or with monsters got up in the thin and stretchy skin of humanity, sometimes she thinks of Plan C: _All shall love me and despair._

And then she thinks it might be time to stop listening to _Fellowship of the Ring_ as background noise in her quarters, take a nap, then FIRE ZE MISSILES.

It’s generally assumed that Maria doesn’t have a sense of humour.

In fact she does. It’s just a little quirky and generally considered inappropriate for a woman in a command position of an intelligence organisation.

* * *

 

Maria doesn’t much like the idea of Project Insight.

Maybe it’s just that she’s spent so much of her life being judged and found wanting without ever being given a chance to prove herself in the first place that she’s not comfortable with the idea of measuring people up from a distance and taking them out: judge, jury, and executioner all at once.

Yes, sometimes people need to be dealt with outside the law because the law can’t hold them. But Maria firmly believes that should be on an individual basis, case-by-case, with due consideration, necessary caution, and more safeguards than the Fridge.

As the helicarriers grow, so does her unease. She reviews the safeguards and protections for the helicarrier’s operations, obsessively looking at the loopholes in the targeting systems, the possibilities for abuse and betrayal.

“It’s a lot of power in very few hands, sir,” she answers when Fury wants to know what’s eating her.

“Yes, but it’s _our_ hands.”

Fury agrees to the backdoors – just between them. Just in case. And because, as he puts it, “It’s better than you stealing key components and going on the lam.”

She doesn’t say she would do that if it became necessary.

She doesn’t say she wouldn’t.

As it turns out, the backdoors are _very_ necessary, and it’s not her on the lam in the end: it’s Romanoff and Rogers, and eventually Fury, too.

* * *

 

Every now and then, Maria entertains the idea of getting out of S.H.I.E.L.D entirely. No more secrets, no more lies – an ordinary life.

She knows she’d be bored within a week. She knows she’d drive her boss and her co-workers crazy. She’s pretty sure she’d end up inventing challenges to keep her entertained. But sometimes – in little moments here and there – she just wants to be unthinkingly _normal._

She’d probably wake up one morning to find Barton trying to cook breakfast while Natasha cleaned every weapon Maria has hidden in her apartment. Because just because she walked away from S.H.I.E.L.D doesn’t mean S.H.I.E.L.D would walk away from her - as the situation with Phil showed.

Fury greenlit her to know about T.A.H.I.T.I _after_ he’d had Coulson brought back. Maria sometimes wonders if this was because she’d have called bullshit on his decision – and argued it. Nobody was that necessary – not her, not Phil, not Fury.

Phil taught her that.

Maria occasionally wonders if Fury intended what he did to Phil as a warning of a kind, too.

Leave the old man swinging in the wind and he’ll drag you back from hell if necessary, screaming all the way.

* * *

 

Plan F involves hiring Coulson’s Little Hacker Girl, giving her unlimited access to S.H.I.E.L.D systems - a hacker’s wet dream – and let her hunt down the leak.

* * *

 

Plan G involves hiring JARVIS from Stark, giving him unlimited access to S.H.I.E.L.D systems – one of Stark’s wet dreams (and Maria doesn’t want to know about the others) – and let him hunt down the leak.

* * *

 

Plan H involves introducing Coulson’s Little Hacker Girl to Stark’s AI, and then finding a bunker in which to cower from the fallout.

* * *

 

There’s a brief period of time when Maria thinks the World Security Council might be sabotaging them. To the point where she starts doling out false leads and misinformation, keeping track of who goes where and does what in order to determine where the weak spot is.

The Council complain that not enough is being done, and that what _is_ being done isn’t being done _right._ And from a purely statistical point of view, missions are more likely to fall through in the shift of politics right after a WSC meeting than any other time, but that doesn’t mean that the WSC are the problem.

 _A_ problem, yes. _The_ problem? Probably not.

Still, she finds it frustrating.

“We should just replace the WSC with Muppets,” she grumbles one day after observing a particularly trying meeting.

“What would that change?” Jasper deadpans, looking up from his tablet and pushing his glasses up his nose.

“Well, at least there’d be more singing and dancing, and amusing running gags.”

* * *

 

She calls Angelina because sometimes an external viewpoint is nice to have. And because there are two people in the world she absolutely trusts not to use her fear against her, and one of them is in a nursing home and doesn’t always remember Maria.

“I don’t suppose you’d think about coming in? As a consultant?”

“I might. If you called a little more often.”

“Things are busy. S.H.I.E.L.D has a high-level leak – one we can’t plug.”

“You expect me to walk in and find your leak? You have an entire organisation at your fingertips.” Then, because Angelina knows Maria, she asks, “Are things that bad?”

“Getting that way.”

There’s a silence. Maria can almost hear the gears turning in the other woman’s head as she considers the situation. “I will see what I can find for you. But S.H.I.E.L.D has evaded jurisdiction for many years. It will not be easy.”

“Thank you.”

“You can thank me by calling more often. And tell Melinda to call, too!”

Angelina hangs up before Maria can point out that Melinda is a grown woman and more than capable of calling her mom all by herself if she wants to.

* * *

 

Later, in spite of the knowledge that S.H.I.E.L.D was rotten from the start, Maria wonders if there was anything she should have noticed and didn’t, anything she could have done.

Maybe she could have pushed Fury to talk to Thor about engaging Sif in S.H.I.E.L.D work after hunting down the Asgardian runaway. Sif certainly didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would let odd things go by without questioning them.

Of course, Sif was also the kind of woman who wouldn’t let odd things go by without questioning them.

And facts are, there wasn’t much time between when the notice came by that there was an Asgardian runaway on the loose with an eye to Earth domination (okay, _another_ Asgardian runaway on the loose with an eye to Earth domination) and when Rogers and Romanoff outed HYDRA.

But still. Maria really wouldn’t have minded working with Sif of Asgard.

Her and her teeny tiny girl-crush.

* * *

 

“I would have sent flowers after the surgery,” she tells Pepper, “but it felt slightly awkward. How are you feeling?”

“I still get these hot flushes every now and then. But that might just be old age,” Pepper replies with a sideways smile. “Otherwise, everything seems to be working more or less the same, and I haven’t exploded yet. How are things on your side?”

Maria can tell Pepper a little, but not much. Phil had more leeway, back when he was liaising with Stark Industries, but then, Phil was a guy and therefore less likely to be accused of ‘gossip’.

Maria considers her calls to Pepper a strategic exchange of information between two powerful parties in the business of world security, with the political nous to make trouble for the other but choosing to fight on the same side.

Which is why she answers, “Troubled.”

“Anything we can help with?”

Maria trusts Pepper rather more than Fury trusts Stark. She answers honestly. “If I could ask for help, Pepper, I would.”

“Well, the offer’s open. Not to S.H.I.E.L.D,” Pepper adds, unnecessarily.

“I appreciate it.”

* * *

 

Maria stares through the glass at the Director’s body. It all feels surreal – the hurricane force of Fury’s personality gone, gone in a fusillade of bullets as the enemies they tried to dig up struck from the shadows.

She’s in charge now.

It’s a terrifying thought, even if she doesn’t show it. She _can’t_ show it – _she’s_ the acting Director of SHIELD, now – a woman that half of SHIELD thinks got the position on her knees, and the other half doesn’t much like.

She has to hold it together. She has to think of what comes next.

_What Would Fury Do?_

For starters, she thinks angrily, Fury wouldn’t die in the first place.

When the doctor approaches her with the sign-off sheet, she sees the last injection given and realises exactly what the old bastard planned.

_Goddammit, sir._

* * *

 

The second-last time S.H.I.E.L.D sends Maria Hill on a mission, she goes in to watch Steve Rogers’ back as he takes down S.H.I.E.L.D and the cancer festering within it.

As it turns out, she nearly kills him while doing so.

That _definitely_ wasn’t in the plan.

* * *

 

Maria takes a great and satisfying pleasure in telling nothing but the truth while Stark eyes her like she’s an asp he’s taking to his bosom. And maybe she is a weapon, but he’s not her target.

Pepper, however, is smiling when Maria gets out of interview. “So, what happens now?”

“I have no idea,” Maria says, returning the smile. "Guess we'll find out."

 

_No plan survives contact with the enemy._

_~ Helmuth von Moltke (the Elder) ~  
(paraphrased by Correlli Barnett)_

**Author's Note:**

> The summary is, of course, a hat-tilt to _Leverage_.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * ["The Tactical Result Of An Engagement" Cover](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5696518) by [endeni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/endeni/pseuds/endeni)




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